Phone to users: Get your butt in gear!

Need extra encouragement logging that last mile on your morning run? You might be interested in Nokia's 5140i camera phone, introduced by the company on Tuesday.

Among other sporty features, the dust- and splash-resistant phone for active-minded gabbers includes Nokia's Fitness Coach application, which the company describes as an always-on personal training partner. (No word yet on its stringency level: "You call that a bicep curl? My arthritic 90-year-old mother can do better than that!"). The triband phone also enables planning and recording of activities, as well as sharing of training data via SMS. And it comes with sports-related wallpapers, animated screensavers and pump-you-up MP3 ring tones. (Hey, a little "Rocky" theme music never hurt anyone on that last lap).

In addition, the Nokia 5140i builds on the "Training Mates" cooperation between Nokia and Polar Electro, a manufacturer of sports instruments and heart rate monitors. The phone, for example, connects with Polar's wrist computers, designed for fitness, running, cycling and outdoor enthusiasts. Following exercise, training data can be transferred and viewed graphically on the Nokia 5140i display.

The phone is expected to begin shipping--or running or climbing, as the case may be--in the second quarter of 2005, with an estimated retail price of 200 euros ($260).

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Leslie Katz, Crave's senior editor, heads up a team that covers the most crushworthy (and wackiest) tech, science, and culture around. As a co-host of the now-retired CNET News Daily Podcast, she was sometimes known to channel Terry Gross and still uses her trained "podcast voice" to bully the speech recognition software on automated customer service lines. E-mail Leslie.
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